Chapter 4 – AUNT HELEN’S TRUE IDENTITY

I followed Mrs. Carter through the dimly lit corridors toward the kitchen.

The large stainless-steel room was empty except for the security guard standing by the heavy reinforced back door.

Through the glass pane, I could see a woman standing in the freezing Chicago rain.

She wore a tan trench coat, drenched and clinging to her.

She was pounding on the glass.

“Let me in! I know what happened tonight! You have to let me see the child!”

I looked at the guard. “Did you call Mr. Moretti?”

“He’s upstairs with his daughter,” the guard grunted. “Told me not to disturb him unless someone was shooting. Do you want me to get rid of her?”

I looked at the woman’s frantic face.

The lady from yesterday, Isabelle had called her. The one Vanessa told me to call Aunt Helen. The one who was supposed to take her away.

“No,” I said. “Open it.”

The guard frowned but unlocked the deadbolt.

The woman stumbled inside, shivering, water dripping onto the spotless tile floor.

She was older than Vanessa. Maybe late forties.

Her eyes were bloodshot, and she looked terrified.

“Where is Vanessa?” she gasped, grabbing my arm.

I gently peeled her fingers off. “Miss Bellini has left the property. She won’t be returning.”

The woman let out a strangled sob and sank into one of the kitchen chairs.

“She promised,” she whispered. “She promised I’d get the girl tonight. Before he found out.”

My blood ran cold.

“Before who found out? Mr. Moretti?”

The woman looked up at me, her mascara running in dark tracks down her cheeks.

“You don’t understand. Vanessa didn’t want the girl out of the house because she was redesigning the room.”

She pulled a soaked manila envelope from inside her coat.

“She was selling her to me.”

The kitchen went completely silent.

Even the security guard stepped forward, his hand dropping to his holster.

“What are you talking about?” I demanded, my voice shaking.

“I run a private adoption agency out of state,” the woman cried. “Highly discreet. For very wealthy clients who don’t want to wait for paperwork. Vanessa contacted me a month ago.”

She opened the wet envelope and pulled out a stack of documents.

She shoved them across the steel island.

I stared at them.

They were guardianship transfer papers.

Forged with Luca Moretti’s signature.

“She told me Luca wanted the child sent away to boarding school, but preferred a private, permanent placement off the books,” the woman said, crying hysterically now. “She charged me two million dollars. I paid half upfront yesterday.”

I felt physically sick.

Vanessa hadn’t just been trying to clear a room for a fake baby.

She had been human trafficking her fiancé’s ten-year-old daughter.

“Why?” I whispered. “She had everything here. She was marrying a billionaire.”

“Because she owed a debt,” the woman choked out. “A massive debt. To someone she was terrified of.”

My mind immediately flashed to the gold watch under my mattress.

Thomas Moretti.

Vanessa was buying expensive black-market drugs for a dead man. A dead man who was Luca’s brother.

Suddenly, the kitchen door swung open.

Luca stood there.

He had changed out of his suit into dark jeans and a black sweater.

He looked at the crying woman, then at the documents on the counter.

He picked them up.

As his eyes scanned the forged signatures, the air in the room dropped ten degrees.

I had never seen a man look so dangerously calm.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t throw anything.

He simply looked at the woman.

“Who are you?”

“H-Helen Vance,” she stuttered, terrified of the man standing in front of her.

“Helen,” Luca said softly. “You tried to purchase my daughter.”

Helen shrank back. “I thought you knew! Vanessa said—”

“You are going to sit in this chair,” Luca interrupted, his voice like ice. “My men are going to take you to a very quiet room in the basement. You are going to tell them every single detail about Vanessa Bellini, her bank accounts, and where she went tonight.”

He looked at the security guard.

“Take her down.”

Helen screamed as the guard grabbed her arms, dragging her out of the kitchen.

When the doors swung shut, Luca leaned against the steel counter.

He closed his eyes, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the edge of the metal.

“Mr. Moretti?” I whispered.

He didn’t open his eyes.

“She was going to sell my little girl, Charlotte.”

His voice finally broke. The mafia boss cracked, just for a second.

I took a step forward.

“Sir… there is something else you need to know.”

He opened his eyes. They were dark, hollow.

“What?”

“Upstairs. While I was putting away Isabelle’s pajamas…”

I took a deep breath.

“I found a gold pocket watch hidden in her drawer. Isabelle said it fell out of Vanessa’s purse.”

Luca frowned. “A watch?”

“It had an engraving inside.”

I looked him dead in the eye.

“It said, To my beloved brother, Thomas.”

Luca stopped breathing.

Then, from the dark hallway behind us, a man’s voice echoed.

“She shouldn’t have told you that, Luca.”

We both spun around.

Standing in the doorway was a man holding a silenced pistol.

He looked exactly like Luca, only paler, thinner, and haunted.

Thomas Moretti was alive.

And he had his gun pointed directly at my chest.

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